


The Great Gekkoukan Rock Pile

by TwilightKnight17



Category: Persona 3, Persona Series
Genre: Gen, brief cameo by the IT, crack taken semi-seriously, life stones, you guys know this is all your fault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 22:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15694689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwilightKnight17/pseuds/TwilightKnight17
Summary: Things abandoned in meta-space always return to reality eventually. Long before the Investigation Team learned this, SEES discovered it in their own way.





	The Great Gekkoukan Rock Pile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IcyStarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IcyStarlight/gifts), [Efelkay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Efelkay/gifts), [sakurabomb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakurabomb/gifts).



> Sometimes you have a really funny conversation on Discord and after 900 years you finally sit down and write it out. This is the slightly-angsty/heartwarming half, because unfortunately the silly half and the heartwarming half didn't mesh quite enough to be included in the same fic.

It started after the fight with the Arcana Shadow on the train.

When the members of SEES arrived at school the next morning, there were a few rocks scattered near the front door of the building, tucked away just to one side. Normally none of them would have even noticed, but Yukari had stopped to tie her shoe, and just happened to glance over.

“Hey, guys?” she called, careful not to attract anyone else’s attention. Minato and Junpei turned back to look, and she pointed. “Do those look like life stones to you?”

Minato picked one up to examine it more closely, and then nodded. Life stones were all roughly the same shape and size, glimmering with the healing magic crystallized inside. These were cold and grey, though, and he realized it was the ones that had been used and tossed aside. With no magic left, they were ordinary rocks, and instead of remaining scattered around in the Dark Hour, apparently they were being spit back into reality.

Specifically, right by the entrance, for some reason.

“That’s kinda weird,” Junpei said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Nobody’s gonna notice them, though. They’re just rocks out here.”

“Probably,” Minato agreed. “There’s no magic left, at least.”

All of them agreed that the rocks were harmless, and hurried on to class. None of them even bothered mentioning it to Mitsuru; with everything else they had to deal with, rocks were a low priority.

***

A few more showed up after pretty much every Tartarus mission. Even after they learned healing magic, it was more convenient to pull out a life stone for small wounds, rather than using up their energy to heal. They expected that the school would start cleaning up the rocks eventually, especially after their next full-moon mission left enough to cause them to be plainly visible as a pile. What they didn’t expect, though, was that when the attempt to clean did occur, the students objected.

“It might upset the ghosts. Everyone knows the school is haunted.”

“A whole bunch showed up when Yamagishi came back.”

“That pile got way bigger and a whole bunch of the Lost got better!”

“You can’t move it!”

And so the rock pile stayed, getting bigger a few rocks at a time. Most of SEES thought it was amusing, at least. Junpei went out of his way to use at least two life stones on every trip, and even though Yukari made fun of him for it, Minato caught her on more than one occasion choosing a life stone over using dia.

As the year wore on and SEES gained even more members, they were all introduced to the rock pile, too. Ken and Shinjiro pretended they didn’t have time for anything silly like that, but they contributed when they thought no one was looking. Aigis was confused but enthusiastic, and Koromaru, even though he didn’t have opposable thumbs, helped where he could. With each Arcana Shadow that fell, each major battle fought, the pile increased exponentially once a month, until it was over a foot high and only growing taller.

"The rock goddess shares her blessing!" Junpei called to Yukari as they walked into the courtyard the morning after the August full moon. A handful of other students were milling around too, having made the connection between full moons and major increases in the pile.

"Did you seriously come all this way to look at the rock pile?" Yukari sighed, but Junpei just grinned.

"You came, too."

The truly amazing thing, other than that the school actually tolerated not cleaning up the rocks, was that no one else tried to take them either. Not a single person removed a rock from the pile, whether out of respect or fear, no one could be sure. But it was a regular source of discussion whenever it got significantly bigger, and it was a nice change from worries about school or Apathy Syndrome. People actually seemed like they looked forward to seeing how much bigger it would get once a month.

***

In October, there were even more than usual, though not a single remaining member of SEES had any energy to join the rest of the school in the usual speculation. After the funeral, they took turns one at a time, stopping into Tartarus just for a moment each night to add one more rock to the pile.

A week of that later, Mitsuru finally cornered Minato and Yukari one day while they were doing laundry.

“What’s going on with the rock pile?” she asked, one hand on her hip. “Why do you insist on adding to it? What purpose does it serve?”

Minato stared down into the laundry basket. “...hope,” he murmured.

Yukari picked up the thought to elaborate. “It’s something to look forward to,” she said. “People going to school, seeing if the pile has gotten any bigger. Even if it’s just one rock. It’s a mystery, and it’s a _good_ mystery. The mysterious school rock pile.”

Mitsuru looked dumbfounded, like she hadn’t considered that. In all the bleakness going on around them, death and despair and confusion, just one good thing could make all the difference. She never questioned them again, and took her turn as well to go to Tartarus on nights without a mission, leaving her own contribution to the still-growing pile.

***

Minato kept up with the pile through December. Night after night after night, one life stone at a time, one piece of consistency in a world that was falling apart. Even as his friends crumbled, even as it seemed like there was no hope left, he kept going. It was all that he could do, when everything was in danger of being ripped away from him.

It paid off, in the end, when they decided to fight, and the pile grew even more throughout January as they fought their way to the top of the tower.

And on February 1st, students arrived at the front doors of Gekkoukan High School to find that they had been entirely buried by rocks. There was pandemonium as people tried to figure out what to do, and after the rocks had been moved to storage and the faculty had deliberated, the pile was moved to a specially constructed enclosure in the center of the courtyard. No one ever learned how the pile had come to be, but people swore that it was still getting bigger.

***

When everything was over and SEES had gone their separate ways, they still returned every once in a while with life stones depleted from training and work for the Shadow Operatives, to keep adding to the pile. To keep that sense of mystery alive for the next generation.

Two years and a half years after the end of the Dark Hour, Yu Narukami and his friends walked onto the school grounds and stopped dead at the sight of the towering pile of rocks.

“Uhh… Are those what I think they are?” Yosuke asked.

“They look a bit like life stones,” Yukiko mused.

Chie walked over to look at the plaque on the side of the low wall that contained the pile. “It just says ‘The Great Gekkoukan Rock Pile, 2009-2010’ on it. You don’t really think these are all life stones, do you?”

“They’re shaped just like them, though,” Kanji said. “They’ve all got that weird flat side; see, look.”

He was their most detail-oriented friend, and sure enough as they all looked closer, all the rocks in the pile were clearly depleted life stones.

Yu glanced around the perfectly ordinary school, in the perfectly ordinary city, and for some reason felt a chill go up his back. “What happened here?”

The idea that anyone could have gone through that many healing items was kind of terrifying. But no answers were forthcoming, and the uneasy feeling the pile left them with received no resolution.

But before they left, Yu added a single glowing stone to the pile, and swore he felt someone smiling in response.

**Author's Note:**

> We went from _"what happens if you litter in tartarus? is it like when fuuka got stuck there, would they find their own litter later?? or does it disappear?? or turn up in school the next morning?"_ to _"the rock goddess shares her blessing"_ and it was great.
> 
> There was a spectacular discussion along the way about our heroes ~~particularly Yu~~ eating the life stones, but obviously "eat the rock" doesn't mesh with the rocks still existing for the rock pile. Which was a shame, b/c Yu wanting to eat the rock pile is a hilarious mental image, but oh well. It is what it is. And what it is, is ridiculous. XDDDD


End file.
